“Marrysong” Introduction

• The Jamaican poet Dennis Scott published "Marrysong" in 1989. A loose, expanded sonnet, the poem's is about a man trying to understand his wife—a woman who, to him at least, seems unknowable and unpredictable. Using an extended metaphor, the husband compares his wife's sudden and intense emotional fluctuations to an ever-shifting landscape that he must navigate. Unable to fully understand her complex personality, the husband ultimately has to accept his wife for who she is—something that actually makes their love stronger. The best way to approach love, the poem implies, is to treat it as an unpredictable journey.

• Read the full text of “Marrysong”

“Marrysong” Summary

• He never managed to fully understand her. As the years passed, her emotional landscape continued, without fail, to change as he observed her. He could lose himself for an entire hour inside the deep well of her anger, only to turn around to find her as happy and calm as a babbling stream—despite the fact that her voice had been hoarse with emotion just the day before. He'd figure her out, but then she'd become totally foreign and unknown to him all over again. The roads on the metaphorical maps he'd make of her would disappear, making those maps unreliable. Sometimes wind blew hard through her emotional landscape and brought rain that tasted like the sea—and then all of a sudden she would change the shape of her shores, which used to be perfectly still and calm. Everything changed every single day, her love casting smaller and then bigger shadows that appeared like trees you'd see from a hill that popped up out of nowhere. There was a new landscape to be encountered on each lively journey that he was forced to take in order to understand her. So he accepted her emotional landscape, which was always unexpected and unique. He thought curiously about it and found himself staying home so that he could explore the many nooks and crannies of her mind.

“Marrysong” Themes

• 

  The Complexity of Love and Marriage

  “Marrysong” is a testament to the fact that love is often messy and confusing. As a husband attempts to better understand his wife and, in turn, their relationship, he is frequently mystified by the swift changes in their dynamic—the way that the “territory” of their marriage seems to “shift[] under his eye,” moving swiftly from anger, to laughter, to coolness, to calm. The poem suggests that, even within the intimate confines of marriage, it’s impossible to ever fully know one’s partner.

  At the same time, the poem implies that the husband learns to appreciate the dynamic that this creates, committing himself to their relationship not in spite of its unpredictability, but because of it. Love, the poem argues, is above all a kind of journey that must be continuously navigated in order to survive.

  “He never learned her, quite,” the speaker says in the poem’s first line, making it clear that the husband can never completely grasp the inner workings of his wife’s emotional life. In other words, being married to somebody doesn’t automatically lead to an all-encompassing understanding of that person.

  As such, the husband’s attempts to “chart” his wife’s emotions and actions are futile, since whenever he makes a metaphorical map of her emotional landscape, she throws him off by suddenly changing “the shape of shores”—an indication that her personality and way of moving through the world cannot be easily categorized. This, then, underscores the idea that marriage isn’t easy, in part because each partner has different emotions and different ways of approaching life. And these differences, it seems, make it difficult to feel as if a marriage is steady and predictable.

  Because of this element of unpredictability, the poem implies, the best thing lovers can do is accept the surprises and fluctuations that are inherently part of being in love. In this sense, a marriage ought to be approached as an ever-changing journey instead of a joyless struggle. In keeping with this, the speaker becomes a cartographer mapping his wife’s emotional complexities, and though this means embracing seemingly erratic changes, there is at least one constant in their relationship: the love they share.

  In the process of outlining the wife’s complexity and unpredictability, the poem unfortunately draws upon sexist stereotypes about women. After all, the figure of an unpredictable woman who can’t control her emotions is fraught with sexism, and though “Marrysong” isn’t necessarily overtly sexist, it’s hard to deny that the poem frames the wife as illogical in a way that nods to misogynistic ideas having to do with husbands learning to control or reign in their wives.

  That said, though, the poem’s primary goal is to illustrate the complex push and pull of marriage. Accordingly, the focus is on the husband’s journey to accept his wife’s idiosyncrasies, as the speaker notes that the husband “stayed home increasingly to find / his way among the landscapes of her mind”—meaning that the husband ends up finding himself drawn to the unsteadiness of his relationship with his wife, whose unpredictability actually encourages him to spend more time with her. It’s therefore clear that he accepts his wife for who she is and, no longer trying to understand her in reductive ways, is able to love her more fully. As a result, the poem emphasizes the idea that love is something that constantly evolves and that accepting this evolution as a worthwhile journey can lead to richer, more meaningful relationships.

  Where this theme appears in the poem:

  • Lines 1-17

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Marrysong”

• Lines 1-3

  He never learned ...
  ... under his eye.

  The poem's opening lines establish its two central characters: a man and his lover. Given the title of the poem and the fact that these lovers have been together "year after year," it's safe to assume that they are married.

  The speaker's opening statement, "He never learned her, quite," suggests that he has never managed to fully comprehend his own wife. Right away, this challenges any preconceived notions readers might have about marriage or long-term romantic relationships, questioning the assumption that being romantically involved with somebody for a long time always leads to an easy or simple dynamic.

  The speaker introduces a metaphor for the husband's conception of his wife that will ultimately run throughout the poem:

  [...] Year after year
  That territory, without seasons, shifted
  under his eye. [...]

  In this context, the word "territory" metaphorically presents the wife's personality as a geographical feature, one that "shift[s]" right before the speaker's eyes. The idea of the wife as a moving piece of land implies that her fluctuations affect the speaker's ability to navigate their relationship—after all, it's pretty hard to become familiar with a landscape if it's constantly changing.

  The phrase "without seasons" also plays into the metaphorical connection the poem makes between the wife and the natural world. Whereas seasons are predictable because they occur at the same time each year, the wife "shift[s]" in ways that seem, at least to the husband, random. In this way, the poem's opening lines establish the husband's sense of helplessness when it comes to understanding his wife.

  The speaker uses diacope in the phrase "year after year," the repetition implying that the husband's inability to comprehend his wife is nothing new. She is, it seems, constantly changing. Ironically enough, then, one of the only constants in this marriage is the fact that it is always undergoing a transformation of some sort—a paradox that highlights the idea that romantic relationships unfold in unexpected ways and that this is one of the only predictable things about love.

  These lines also establish the poem's loose adherence to iambic pentameter, a meter in which each line is made up of five iambs (metrical feet consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable; da-DUM). The first line, for example, can be broken down like this:

  He nev- | er learned | her, quite. | Year af- | ter year

  The fourth foot of this line can be read as a spondee, or a foot made up of two stressed syllables, or a trochee ("Year aft-"). Either way, when combined with the caesuras after "her" and "quite," this disrupts the iambic rhythm, squandering the sense of predictability that the meter might otherwise lend to the poem. This, in turn, is appropriate for a poem about an unpredictable, volatile romantic relationship.

• Lines 3-6

  An hour he ...
  ... in her voice.

  

  

• Lines 7-11

  He charted. She ...
  ... faultlessly calm.

  

  

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• Lines 11-14

  All, all was ...
  ... jaunty helpless journey.

  

  

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• Lines 15-17

  So he accepted ...
  ... of her mind.

  

  

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“Marrysong” Symbols

• 

  Nature

  The natural world in "Marrysong" represent the wife's constant state of change. In the same way that nature is susceptible to sudden and extreme transformations as a result of the weather or other geological events, the wife's internal world is subject to the same kind of drastic metamorphosis because of how intensely she experiences her own emotions.

  Nowhere is this more apparent than in lines 9 through 11, when the speaker says:

  Wind brought him rain sometimes, tasting of sea —
  and suddenly she would change the shape of shores
  faultlessly calm [...].

  The idea of wind bringing enough rain to completely change the contours of the wife's emotional landscape demonstrates just how severely she can fluctuate between tranquility and chaos. In turn, nature itself comes to symbolize the wife's emotional volatility and, moreover, the idea that she will always be changing—just like the earth itself.

  Where this symbol appears in the poem:

  • Line 2: “without seasons”
  • Lines 5-6: “cool water laughing where / the day before there were stones in her voice”
  • Line 7: “She made wilderness again.”
  • Lines 9-11: “Wind brought him rain sometimes, tasting of sea - / and suddenly she would change the shape of shores / faultlessly calm.”
  • Lines 12-13: “the shadows of her love shortened or grew / like trees seen from an unexpected hill,”
  • Line 17: “the landscapes of her mind”

“Marrysong” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Alliteration

  The alliteration in "Marrysong" makes the poem sound unified and harmonious. The most prominent alliterative sound in the poem is the /w/ sound, which the speaker stretches across a number of lines. Consider, for example, the way the /w/ sound appears in lines 4 through 9 (including in the "kwa" of "quarried"):

  in the walled anger of her quarried hurt
  on turning, see cool water laughing where
  the day before there were stones in her voice.
  He charted. She made wilderness again.
  Roads disappeared. The map was never true.
  Wind [...]

  The alliterative /w/ sound appears at least once in all the above lines. And even though the /w/ doesn't always dominate the overall sound of a given line, the frequency with which it occurs in this section ensures that readers will pick up on its wobbly effect. In turn, these lines have a certain topsy-turvy quality, as the repeated /w/ creates a slight sense of motion and instability—an effect that captures the husband's inability to keep up with the wife's constant changes.

  In other sections, the speaker uses alliteration to enhance the musicality of more isolated moments. For instance, the speaker alliterates the /j/ sound in line 14:

  new country at each jaunty helpless journey.

  This is just a brief instance of alliteration, but because the /j/ sound is very noticeable, it goes a long way in making the line sound distinct and cohesive. Similarly, line 12 features the /sh/ sound in a quick, passing way that still defines the line's overall feel:

  the shadows of her love shortened or grew

  The quick repetition of this alliterative /sh/ sound lends the line a swishing sensation that reflects the wife's sudden and unexpected emotional vacillations. In turn, alliteration helps the speaker not only bolster the poem's musicality, but also subtly imbue the language with a feeling of fluctuation and movement that mirrors the wife's emotional state, which is constantly in flux.

  Where alliteration appears in the poem:

  • Line 3: “could”
  • Line 4: “walled,” “her,” “quarried,” “hurt”
  • Line 5: “water,” “where”
  • Line 6: “were”
  • Line 7: “wilderness”
  • Line 8: “was”
  • Line 9: “Wind,” “sometimes,” “sea”
  • Line 10: “suddenly,” “would,” “shape,” “shores”
  • Line 12: “shadows,” “shortened”
  • Line 14: “jaunty,” “journey”
  • Line 15: “strange”
  • Line 16: “Wondered,” “Stayed”
  • Line 17: “way”

• Repetition

  

  

  Where repetition appears in the poem:

  • Line 1: “Year after year”
  • Line 11: “All, all”

• Extended Metaphor

  

  

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  Where extended metaphor appears in the poem:

  • Lines 1-3
  • Lines 5-17

• Caesura

  

  

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  Where caesura appears in the poem:

  • Line 1: “her, quite. Year”
  • Line 2: “territory, without”
  • Line 3: “eye. An”
  • Line 5: “turning, see”
  • Line 7: “charted. She”
  • Line 8: “disappeared. The”
  • Line 9: “sometimes, tasting”
  • Line 11: “calm. All, all”
  • Line 15: “geography, constantly”
  • Line 16: “Wondered. Stayed”

• Consonance

  

  

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  Where consonance appears in the poem:

  • Line 1: “never learned her,” “Year after year”
  • Line 2: “territory”
  • Line 3: “under,” “hour,” “lost”
  • Line 4: “walled anger,” “her quarried hurt”
  • Line 5: “turning,” “cool water laughing where”
  • Line 6: “before there were stones,” “her voice”
  • Line 7: “charted,” “made wilderness”
  • Line 8: “Roads disappeared”
  • Line 9: “sometimes,” “tasting,” “sea”
  • Line 10: “suddenly she,” “shape,” “shores”
  • Line 11: “faultlessly calm. All, all”
  • Line 12: “shadows,” “shortened”
  • Line 13: “unexpected”
  • Line 14: “country,” “jaunty helpless journey”
  • Line 15: “accepted,” “geography, constantly strange”
  • Line 16: “Stayed,” “increasingly,” “find”
  • Line 17: “landscapes,” “mind”

• Assonance

  

  

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  Where assonance appears in the poem:

  • Line 1: “Year,” “year”
  • Line 2: “territory,” “without,” “seasons,” “shifted”
  • Line 4: “walled,” “hurt”
  • Line 5: “turning,” “water,” “where”
  • Line 6: “there”
  • Line 9: “rain,” “tasting,” “sea”
  • Line 10: “suddenly,” “she,” “change,” “shape”
  • Line 11: “faultlessly,” “All,” “all,” “each,” “day”
  • Line 13: “trees,” “seen,” “from,” “unexpected”
  • Line 14: “country,” “each,” “jaunty,” “journey”
  • Line 15: “he,” “geography,” “constantly,” “strange”
  • Line 16: “Stayed,” “increasingly”
  • Line 17: “way”

• Simile

  

  

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  Where simile appears in the poem:

  • Lines 12-13: “the shadows of her love shortened or grew / like trees seen from an unexpected hill”

• Enjambment

  

  

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  Where enjambment appears in the poem:

  • Lines 1-2: “year / That”
  • Lines 2-3: “shifted / under”
  • Lines 3-4: “lost / in”
  • Lines 5-6: “where / the”
  • Lines 10-11: “shores / faultlessly”
  • Lines 16-17: “find / his”

• Juxtaposition

  

  

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  Where juxtaposition appears in the poem:

  • Lines 5-6: “see cool water laughing where / the day before there were stones in her voice.”
  • Lines 7-8: “He charted. She made wilderness again. / Roads disappeared. The map was never true.”
  • Lines 9-11: “Wind brought him rain sometimes, tasting of sea - / and suddenly she would change the shape of shores / faultlessly calm.”

• Pun

  

  

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  Where pun appears in the poem:

  • Line 16: “Wondered”

• Irony

  

  

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  Where irony appears in the poem:

  • Lines 15-17: “So he accepted that geography, constantly strange. / Wondered. Stayed home increasingly to find / his way among the landscapes of her mind.”

"Marrysong" Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Territory
• Quarried
• Charted
• Faultlessly
• Jaunty

• (Location in poem: Line 2: “That territory, without seasons, shifted”)

  An area of land.

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Marrysong”

• Form

  That "Marrysong" is one long chunk of text is no accident: the poem is meant to feel a bit daunting, given its take on marriage as a kind of overwhelming wilderness.

  There are some very interesting formal things happening within this block of text, however. Although "Marrysong" has 17 lines instead of 14, it can be considered a stretched sonnet. This means that it loosely adheres to the sonnet structure but has extra lines.

  Calling this poem a sonnet might be confusing. After all, sonnets are supposed to have a clear rhyme scheme and follow iambic pentameter. This poem has no rhyme scheme, and its meter, though iambic in moments, is very loose. That said, many modern sonnets do away with these conventions of the form. But what about those extra three lines?

  That's where "stretched" comes in. But first, some important background: sonnets are essentially two-part poems. The first part proposes some issue, question, or dilemma, to which the second part then responds in some way. The moment when the poem's tone shifts and begins to address or solve the initial problem is called the "turn" or "volta." In a normal Petrarcchan sonnet, the turn comes in line 9; in a Shakespearean sonnet, it comes in the poem's final rhyming couplet.

  And this is why Marrysong is "stretched" sonnet: its turn—its moment of change—comes all the way in line 15, at the beginning of what can be considered a final tercet (three-line stanza):

  So he accepted that geography, constantly strange.

  Here, the husband finally learns to accept his wife's idiosyncrasies—the same ones he was struggling against for the past 14 lines. The poem then ends with a straightforward rhyming couplet that succinctly responds to everything that came before it, just like a good old-fashioned Shakespearean sonnet would:

  Wondered. Stayed home increasingly to find
  his way among the landscapes of her mind.

  In this way, this expanded version of the sonnet's structure delays the turn, giving the speaker more time to thoroughly establish the husband's struggle to understand the wife before pivoting in the last three lines to focus on the husband's newfound embrace of her wide-ranging emotional landscape.

• Meter

  "Marrysong" is written in free verse, which helps keep things unpredictable for the reader—just as the wife's emotions are unpredictable to her husband.

  That said, there are important gestures towards iambic pentameter in the poem. This is in keeping with the fact that the poem is a kind of expanded sonnet (and iambic pentameter is the defacto sonnet meter).

  Iambic pentameter is a meter in which each line has five iambs, or feet consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. There are no lines in the poem that have a perfect iambic rhythm. There are a number of moments that mostly conform to iambic pentameter, however. For example, consider line 10:

  and sud- | denly she | would change | the shape | of shores

  On the whole, this line follows the da-DUM da-DUM rhythm of iambic pentameter, as four of its five feet are iambs. The second foot is an anapest (da-da-DUM), and it's possible to read "would change" as a spondee ("would change"), but overall things are pretty steady here.

  Most other lines, however, are harder to scan. Line 2, for example, is full of caesuras and multi-syllabic words that make it hard to sense an iambic rhythm. One possible way to scan it is as follows:

  That ter- | ritor- | y, with- | out sea- | sons, shifted

  In this reading, the line is in iambic pentameter but contains a feminine ending, meaning that it has an extra unstressed syllable at the end of the final foot: "-sons shifted." In combination with the caesuras, this makes the line sound somewhat off-kilter. At the same time, though, the overall meter remains iambic, maintaining the general feeling of iambic pentameter even as the speaker deviates from the set rhythm from time to time.

  The turn that comes in line 15 features includes two extra feet. It scans like this:

  So he | accept- | ed that | geo- | graphy, | constant- | ly strange

  The first four feet of this line are iambs, and arguably the fifth one can be finagled into an iambic reading too ("-graphy"). This means that the line is in iambic pentameter until it reaches the caesura after the word "geography." But then the speaker adds a trochee ("constant-") followed by another iamb ("-ly strange"). This expands the line and calls attention to the shift that takes place in this moment of the poem, when the husband finally learns to accept his wife's unpredictability. In turn, the poem's loose utilization of iambic pentameter ends up spotlighting some of its most important moments.

• Rhyme Scheme

  The poem does not follow a set rhyme scheme, nor does it feature very many internal or slant rhymes. However, there are two prominent end rhymes that stand out and give the poem a musical sound. The first of these can be found in lines 11 and 12:

  faultlessly calm. All, all was each day new;
  the shadows of her love shortened or grew

  Because the fest of the poem lacks a rhyme scheme, the rhyme that occurs between "new" and "grew" is especially noticeable, ultimately lending a satisfyingly cohesive quality to this section of the poem.

  Similarly, the final two lines feature another end rhyme:

  Wondered. Stayed home increasingly to find
  his way among the landscapes of her mind.

  In some ways, this resembles the rhyming couplet that concludes an English sonnet. This rhyme allows the speaker to wrap up the poem on a musical, pleasant note that reflects the husband's newfound joy in exploring the "landscapes" of the wife's mind.

“Marrysong” Speaker

• The speaker of "Marrysong" remains unidentified. This makes sense, since the poem focuses not on the speaker, but on two characters: a husband and a wife. The speaker describes the nature of their relationship, using limited third person to remain closest to the husband's perspective. The speaker focuses on how the husband is influenced by his wife's general unpredictability without outlining how the woman feels about their relationship. In this way, the poem almost feels like it's from the man's point of view, even if the words technically belong to the third-person speaker.

“Marrysong” Setting

• It's unclear when or where "Marrysong" takes place. Rather than spotlighting a particular setting, the poem focuses on a romantic relationship that could seemingly belong to any time period or culture. In some ways, then, the marriage itself becomes the setting for the poem, especially since the speaker uses an extended metaphor to compare the emotional world of the couple's romance to an ever-changing geological landscape. In turn, the only relevant contextual information has to do with the nature and terrain of this romantic bond, which is portrayed as volatile and dynamic because of the woman's unpredictable personality. This unpredictability, in other words, serves as the backdrop for the entire poem.

Literary and Historical Context of “Marrysong”

• Literary Context

  "Marrysong" belongs to a rich tradition of poetry about romance and marriage. "Marrysong" is specifically about the trials and tribulations of marriage, putting it in conversation with famous divorce poems such as "Modern Love" by George Meredith, "If You Forget Me" by Pablo Neruda, and "Man and Wife" by Robert Lowell. Like "Marrysong," these poems deal with the difficulty of maintaining volatile relationships.

  However, "Marrysong" isn't about ending a marriage—it's about learning to adapt to the complexities that often come along with love. In this sense, it has more in common with some of Shakespeare's sonnets (such as "Sonnet 73" or "Sonnet 138"), which often tackle the nuanced and complicated difficulties that tend to creep into romantic bonds.

  Although "Marrysong" is written in straightforward English, Dennis Scott is known for helping popularize the use of Jamaican vernacular—or "nation language"—in poetry. His poetry collection Uncle Time, which was published in 1973, drew upon nation language to great effect and won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. As an influential poet from the Caribbean, Scott is often read alongside Mervyn Morris, Derek Walcott, and Kamau Brathwaite, among others.

  Historical Context

  "Marrysong" was published in 1989, roughly 20 years after the beginning of the women's liberation movement of the late 1960s. This movement constituted a political and cultural effort to bring about gender equality and challenge patriarchal norms. In particular, one of the major impacts of the women's liberation movement was that it encouraged society to embrace the idea of female independence, ultimately fighting to unveil society's sexist expectation that women should defer to men.

  Of course, "Marrysong" is not explicitly about gender dynamics and female independence, but the topic is worth keeping in mind because the poem is an apparent celebration of the wife's strong-willed personality. However, the poem unfortunately plays into certain stereotypes about women and the role they play in their relationships with men, even if "Marrysong" is technically trying to praise the wife's independent spirit.

  To that end, comparisons of the wife to "wilderness" and the multiple mentions of her unpredictability end up playing into the sexist idea that women are normally expected to be well-behaved when it comes to how they interact with their husbands. With this in mind, the poem's exploration of the wife's intense and fluctuating emotions actually makes it seem more like the speaker faults her for being irrational and uncooperative instead of praising her individuality. As a result, what feels like an attempt to fit into the broader framework of the women's liberation movement actually runs the risk of reinforcing sexist expectations and stereotypes.

More “Marrysong” Resources

• External Resources

  • More About Dennis Scott — Learn more about Dennis Scott, who was not only a poet, but also a dancer, playwright, and actor.

  • Dennis Scott's Obituary — Read the poet's 1991 obituary in The New York Times.

  • Nation Language — Although "Marrysong" is composed in traditional English, Dennis Scott was well known for his use of nation language. Read more here about the use of this vernacular and its impact on Caribbean literature.

  • The Sonnet Form — "Marrysong" is considered a stretched—or expanded—sonnet. Take a look at this glossary of sonnet forms and how they differ from one another.